| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: promise for thousands of years afterwards, as was astrology in
still earlier times, in the service of which probably more
labour, gold, acuteness, and patience have been spent than on any
actual science hitherto: we owe to it, and to its "super-
terrestrial" pretensions in Asia and Egypt, the grand style of
architecture. It seems that in order to inscribe themselves upon
the heart of humanity with everlasting claims, all great things
have first to wander about the earth as enormous and awe-
inspiring caricatures: dogmatic philosophy has been a caricature
of this kind--for instance, the Vedanta doctrine in Asia, and
Platonism in Europe. Let us not be ungrateful to it, although it
Beyond Good and Evil |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: lanterns were lighted in Madame de Dey's antechamber; the servants
were helping their masters and mistresses to put on their clogs, their
cloaks, and their mantles; the card-players had paid their debts, and
all the guests were preparing to leave together after the established
customs of provincial towns.
"The prosecutor, it seems, has stayed behind," said a lady, perceiving
that that important personage was missing, when the company parted in
the large square to go to their several houses.
That terrible magistrate was, in fact, alone with the countess, who
waited, trembling, till it should please him to depart.
"Citoyenne," he said, after a long silence in which there was
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Unconscious Comedians by Honore de Balzac: celebrated Carabine, whose lively wit and cavalier manners and
shameless brilliancy were a counterpoise to the dulness of domestic
life, and the toils of finance and politics.
Whether du Tillet or Carabine were at home or not at home, supper was
served, and splendidly served, for ten persons every day. Artists, men
of letters, journalists, and the habitues of the house supped there
when they pleased. After supper they gambled. More than one member of
both Chambers came there to buy what Paris pays for by its weight in
gold,--namely, the amusement of intercourse with anomalous
untrammelled women, those meteors of the Parisian firmament who are so
difficult to class. There wit reigns; for all can be said, and all is
|
